Like Earninga str?t, this was one of the ancient roads, and made for easy riding, which meant that we covered many miles that day. Nevertheless, the sun was growing low and bright in the sky ahead of us by the time we arrived at the Temes again. The river was narrower here than when we had last seen it back near Lundene, but the waters were high and the current fast, swelled by the snowmelt running down from the hills. A stone bridge traversed it; on the other side a scattering of houses nestled beside a small timber church, while amidst the reeds at the water’s edge a number of small rowing boats had been drawn up on to the shore.
‘Stanes,’ ?lfwold said, when I asked him the name of the place. ‘Over on the other side lies Wessex, the ancient heartland of the English kings.’
‘Wessex,’ I murmured to myself. How far we had come, I thought: from Northumbria to here, the southernmost province which made up the kingdom of England. It had belonged once to the usurper Harold, before he had seized the crown. Now it lay under the charge of Guillaume fitz Osbern, who was one of the realm’s leading noblemen, alongside Malet – and Robert de Commines, I thought, before I remembered.
We had come upon many other villages that day. Some were larger, some were smaller, but all were alike in character, inhabited by gaunt and sullen peasants who spat on the ground as we passed by. I wondered whether they had heard of events in the north, and what that might mean to them. Of course it might not concern them at all; Eoferwic was two hundred miles and more from here. In any case, they could spit and stare as much as they wanted. I knew they would not harm us, for we had horses and mail and swords, and they did not.
That night we spent in our tents, a short way off the road. It was a fitful sleep, though, for I dreamt again of Oswynn, except that her face was shrouded in darkness, and every time I tried to come near her, she melted away into nothing. More than once I woke to find myself breathing hard, sweat running from my forehead, and though I managed to return to sleep each time, it was always to the same dream. When morning came I felt as if I had hardly rested.
The hills lay thick with the night’s frost, and for some time after we resumed our journey we travelled through a landscape glistening white as the fields of heaven. Soon, however, the rime began to melt, the clouds passed in front of the sun, and as the horses settled into their rhythm, so the day wore on. Hour after hour we passed fields and farms nestled amidst gently sloping hills, and it struck me that the country here was not so different from that in Normandy or Flanders. More than once I found myself gazing out across a certain valley or forest, only to be reminded of somewhere I had known in my youth, and for a moment I could imagine myself there once again. But of course it was never quite the same; most times we only had to go on over the next rise or merely beyond the next tree before its appearance suddenly changed and the feeling faded.
Close to midday the road climbed a steep hill, at the top of which we came upon crumbling stone walls and what looked as if it had once been a gatehouse. Its arch had long since collapsed; great blocks of lichen-covered stone, dressed and evenly shaped, littered the side of the way. As we passed within the gates I saw the remains where more buildings had once stood: neat rectangles and half-circles of stone foundations, many with trees and bushes growing in their midst. The air was almost still, the skies filled with shadows as rainclouds loomed overhead. Aside from the seven of us, there was no one.
‘Ythde swa thisne eardgeard,’ ?lfwold intoned as he looked about, ‘?lda scyppend, othth?t burgwara breahtma lease, eald enta geweorc idlu stodon.’
‘Thus He, the creator of men, destroyed this city,’ said Eudo, ‘until, deprived of the sound of its inhabitants, the ancient work of giants stood empty.’
I stared at him in surprise, not just since it was the most I had heard him say in a good many hours, but also because I hadn’t known he could translate English so readily.
?lfwold nodded solemnly. ‘You are near enough. It is from a poem,’ he explained to us. ‘A poem of great sadness and loss, about things which were, but are no more.’
I dismounted, leaving my horse while I walked between the ruins of what must at one time have been houses. Not that there was any sign of those who had lived here; it was probably centuries since they had done so, and all their possessions would have long ago turned to dust.
Shards of slate were strewn across the grass, grey against green, but nestled among them I caught the tiniest glimpse of dull red. I crouched down to get a closer look. It was a stone, cut into a rough cube not much wider than my thumbnail: much like the dice that Radulf owned. I prised it out from the mud and turned its rounded edges between my forefinger and thumb, wiping the dirt from its surface, searching for any hint of markings, though I could see none. One face was smooth, but the rest were rough, encrusted with flakes of something like mortar, which crumbled away at my touch.